A Thousand Projects Will Bloom

As the world focuses on Los Angeles for the annual Academy Awards show, a more compelling and potentially critical drama will be unfolding along Hollywood Boulevard and its environs. After decades of being treated as the region’s outcast, historic Hollywood may be on the verge of a rebound that could make it the most effective symbol of Southern California’s urban renaissance.

Unlike previous grandiose schemes to rebuild the old movie capital, the current revival involves scores of projects, including the restorations of the landmark Egyptian Theatre and Max Factor building and the opening, this fall, of two new entertainment-oriented museums. Most of the planned developments are small and in the field of entertainment, such as Jack’s Sugar Shack, which will feature live music at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. At the same time, the upscale restaurant is making a comeback, with the opening of Pinot Hollywood and the soon-to-be completed Les Deux Cafe. Equally significant is the expansion of existing production--Warner’s old Samuel Goldwyn lot, for example--and post-production facilities.

The pace of this development will be slow and gradual, with most of the activity concentrated in the city’s westernmost reaches around La Brea and Highland. This area’s prospects are greatly enhanced by the more than 21% decline in crime rates throughout Hollywood, in addition to its proximity to the economically healthier environs around Melrose and La Brea avenues.

In all, according to Hollywood Councilmember Jackie Goldberg, there are now 37 new projects in Hollywood at various stages of development, and 27 expansions either underway or in the permitting process--up from virtually zero three years ago. “The first year and a half of my term, my phone was ringing off the hook with goodbyes,” says Goldberg, who was elected in 1993. “Now, we get calls every day from people moving in.”

Many Hollywood insiders, including local activists, property owners and Chamber of Commerce officials, give much of the credit for the incipient revival to Goldberg. After the lackluster tenure of Councilman Mike Woo, Goldberg is widely regarded as the most effective advocate for Hollywood’s business community in a generation.

“The word ‘leadership’ comes to mind,” says Chris Essel, vice president for planning and development at Paramount Studios. “She has used her office as a bully pulpit to really get things done.”

Goldberg’s ambitions to rebuild Hollywood have been recently buttressed by the support of Mayor Richard Riordan, who has decided to make reviving Hollywood a political priority. After being largely ignored under his predecessor, Hollywood is now ranked one “of the best strategic assets in the city” and the linchpin of the mayor’s overall economic recovery strategy, according to Gary S. Mendoza, deputy mayor for economic development. “If Hollywood comes around,” says Mendoza, “it would be symbolic of L.A.’s turnaround.”

The alliance of the former venture capitalist and the gay, left-leaning councilwoman is unusual even by Hollywood standards, but could prove extremely effective. But many old Hollywood hands, such as longtime activist Robert W. Nudelman, are skeptical about the mayor’s true intentions. They note that while Riordan successfully used Hollywood’s decline to defeat Woo for mayor in 1993, it is only now, a year before his reelection bid, that he has decided to make their neighborhood a priority.

“He was talking about Hollywood during the [‘93] election but, so far, we haven’t seen anything,” complains Nudelman, who is spearheading the creation of a new museum at the restored Max Factor Building on Highland, just south of the Boulevard.

To be sure, Hollywood activists have good reason to be skeptical. Longtime residents like Delmar Watson have watched in horror as conditions in their city have steadily deteriorated since the 1950s. Sitting amid old photographs in his studio just south of Hollywood Boulevard, Watson wistfully remembers the days when his city was both glamorous and a good, family-oriented neighborhood.

“You would see Al Jolson walk around; you’d see the stars and the powers--now they’d be afraid of being mugged,” says Watson, who was a child actor. “It [Hollywood] was more than motion pictures, it was fun. Now they have ruined it to the point that they couldn’t have done a better job if they tried.”

There are many culprits in the area’s decline: city planners obsessed with downtown redevelopment; the homeless invasion; drug dealers; teenage runaways; the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the ’93 riots and the Northridge earthquake. There also has been no shortage of ballyhooed large-scale projects--the county-backed Hollywood museum project in the 1960s and the Community Redevelopment Agency’s Melvin Simon-led redevelopment effort in the 1980s--that fizzled.

Given the current fiscal climate, no one expects government to subsidize Hollywood projects. Instead, the new revitalization drive will largely depend upon the united efforts of the long-fragmented and often apathetic Hollywood business community. Particularly critical is a growing willingness of property owners, studios and merchants to accept basic responsibility for Hollywood’s renewal.

The clearest evidence of this more self-reliant mood can be found in the creation of a business-improvement district along sections of Hollywood Boulevard between Brea and Highland boulevards. Formerly divided among themselves, merchants appear ready to tax themselves in order to bolster security and beautify the boulevard. Already, Hollywood community-based campaigns, employing, among others, homeless kids organized at the L.A. Free Clinic, have made historic Hollywood among the least graffiti-scarred areas in the city.

Ultimately, the best reasons favoring Hollywood’s revival, however, lie with the economic restructuring now sweeping Southern California. The remarkable growth in entertainment employment, up nearly 30,000 in 1995 and more than double the numbers just eight years ago, has increased demand for production and office space. The rapid expansion of studio and related facilities elsewhere in the regions, particularly on the Westside and Burbank, is slowly making investment in the historic area cost-competitive.

As vacancy rates in outlying areas dip into single digits, real estate and development interests sense a new opportunity in the old district. “Hollywood is at a stage that’s prime for development,” says Steve Ullman, president of Grant Parking, who is developing several properties, including a new site for Panavision.

At the same time, Southern California is becoming more dependent on tourism as a source of revenue and jobs. Even in its still-deteriorated condition, historic Hollywood remains Los Angeles County’s strongest tourist draw. But after tourists see the Walk of Fame, “there’s no place else for them to go,” says Phyllis Caskey, whose Hollywood Entertainment Museum will open this fall.

Caskey and other Hollywood hands believe that the new museums and restorations are critical to reestablishing the appeal of the district, both for visitors and the region. They point to Disney’s success in turning the old El Capitan into the nation’s No. 1-grossing single-screen movie theater as evidence that Hollywood can recapture its reputation as a center for family-oriented entertainment.

Investors in Hollywood hope that Disney’s success will lure other entrepreneurs to the area. There are rumors that other studios, notably Warners and Paramount, may be considering projects similar to El Capitan. And private developers have restored such landmark office buildings as the Hollywood Professional Building, at Sycamore and Hollywood, and the Mayer building, at Western.

This rash of projects inspires visions among residents like Watson that the old district will once again be Southern California’s ultimate urban icon. “Maybe we’ve finally gotten to a time when people in City Hall realize that this is not a suburb of Los Angeles--that it’s a world-famous place,” says Watson. “If I were a young man, I’d be trying to buy all the property I could in Hollywood.”